William Wharton - Tidings

Recently, entrepreneurs, mostly Parisians, have been buying up the woods, bulldozing out the hardwood, selling it off to paper mills, or as firewood, then planting these woods with Douglas fir for Christmas trees. This had been going on for over fifteen years now.

Five years ago, to protect the area from this and other depredations, one of the first large parks in France was established. Le Parc Régionale du Morvan. Our mill is just included on the western edge. West of us, the forests are still being massacred. Young pines, five to ten years old, abound. The Morvan is becoming known as the Christmas-tree capital of France.

I’ve decided to snitch my tree from one of the Christmas-tree farms outside the protected park. I’ve worked up a whole rationale to defend my action; however, I don’t think it would hold in a French court.

But I’m desperate.

When I show our Monsieur Boudine ‘Christmas Tree’ to Lor she’s as disgusted as Ben and I are. Already we’d decided to trim our wings from the usual fourteen-foot monster we’ve always had jammed in the corner on the right side of the fireplace. It was impossible to trim, blocked the food cabinet, and overlapped the steps up to the toilet. This year we’ll have a smaller tree, maybe ten feet, and set it in the millstone on the other side. Right now, we’re not even close to ten feet.

Loretta says she’ll drive into Château Chinon and look for a tree. She also has some shopping to do. Fat chance, the French idea of a large tree almost reaches the navel. While she’s gone, Ben and I get out the decorations, wipe off the balls, unwind garlands, untangle electric lights. We’re preparing to decorate a giant tree no matter what. Irrational persistence can be a powerful force.

We also clean off and set up our crèche on the sill of the west window. I string one set of lights around it. Ben goes out to gather moss from trees and rocks for the inside and roof of the stable.

What we’re doing doesn’t have much to do with religion in a Christian sense. We’re playing dolls, acting out our husbanding, parenting impulse, making sure that baby is cozy and warm, surrounded by father and mother, warm breathing animals, the steam of urine and manure-soaked hay giving off the heat of fermentation. We live with it, this is not too far removed from the life all around us here.

When Lor comes back, no singing, humming; no skipping. No tree. There wasn’t a tree over three feet tall in the whole town. She says she almost stopped and gnawed down a tree beaver-style on the way home. I tell her I’m going out tonight to liberate a tree for us. She isn’t fighting me too hard. Loretta for all her seeming airs of gentility is a practical, pragmatic person when the going gets tough. It’s what makes her an effective first-grade teacher. It would also make her a good president or chairman of the Ford Motor Company.

That night we walk up to Madame Le Page’s for Ben’s dinner. It’s dark as it was when I went out to cut pine branches. All the better. On the way out from the mill our thermometer shows three degrees and there’s moisture in the air. I tell Ben it could easily snow again. He wants snow more than anything else for Christmas. I’m hoping it will hold off till the girls get down here. They’re driving our other car, a 1969 Ford Capri. This wreck makes my failing Fiat seem like a new Cadillac.

The meal is terrific; the pintade cooked perfectly. Ben has an entire liter of lemonade to himself while Loretta and I splurge with a 1976 Pouilly Fumé. The dining room is all ours; heads of deer, sanglier mounted around us. The restaurant is called La Fin de la Chasse and its main clientele are local hunters.

We walk down in the overwhelming dark and get home at about nine o’clock. I push the wood around in our fire to get it burning again, throw in another log, slip on my boots and prepare myself for the great adventure. Ben knows what I’m about to do but doesn’t volunteer. I don’t press; who wants to spend the evening of his fifteenth birthday in a French jail, and besides he’d probably spook me with his jumpiness. I’m bad enough, myself. With Ben along we’d probably wind up jumping into each other’s laps simultaneously.

I take our car key from the nail over the mantel, pick up a flashlight, let myself down into our cellar through the trap door, grab the saw from where I’ve hung it over the wood pile. I go out the door and slush my way through mud to open the door into our garage.

This time I wouldn’t mind too much if the car doesn’t turn over; but that engine has its ear tuned directly to the starter motor and coughs into life on the second try. The engine has become as easy to arouse as a nymphomaniac. But how would I know? My sexual experience so far indicates that even a certified nymph would just ho-hum me into insignificance. But I can get that Fiat going now, maybe it’s a good sign of things to come. That’s an accidental joke.

I get out to open the big doors, hoping the motor will conk while I’m doing this, but it keeps humming away. I back out slowly, maybe I’ll get stuck in the mud, but those tires grip like tractor wheels. All the omens say I’m in for it.

I drive up through Vauchot and out toward Corbeau. Five miles along I turn toward Monçaron. On my left looms a young pine forest, trees planted about two feet apart, mostly only about twice the size of the tree we already have, but several approach my ideal. I turn down the car lights to just parking indicators. It’s dark. I can scarcely see the road. I shut off my motor and coast the last fifty yards or so. This is a road with practically no traffic. Just ahead is a bridge so narrow one car can barely pass over it.

I sit there in the dark. I roll down both windows and listen; nothing but wind in the trees, the dripping of water from branches, and, now and then, the mew of a night hawk or the whoo-whoo of an owl. Maybe we should just use that Nevers tree, tie Monsieur Boudine’s tree to the top for extra height.

I reach back and get the saw. I let myself quietly out the car door, gently easing it closed.

I have Ben’s flashlight in one hand. It’s still so dark I can’t see anything. I’ll need to do everything by feel. I stumble, creep, crawl, crouch, my way off the road between trees. I try not to step on the smaller ones, while feeling left and right for high trees, higher than my head. I can’t be sure of anything.

I stop and listen. Would anybody actually be hiding in these woods in this wetness, in the dark, just to stop a failed philosopher from snitching a tree? I believe it! But I’ve got to flash my light. I should have come out earlier and marked a tree as usual, but with that damned Monsieur Boudine and his branch there wasn’t time.

I put my hand over the flashlight so just a beam escapes through my fingers. I spin slowly around, carefully scanning for a proper tree. I see one, just the right size, and bushy, twenty yards to the right. I switch off my light, expecting a voice from the dark, or the sound and feel of buckshot. I work my way over, doing the last ten yards on all fours. I hand gauge the thickness of the trunk, give one quick flash to make sure. It’s the right one, over ten feet tall. I scrape and clear away pine needles, dirt from the base of the tree, till I’m below ground level. When I’m finished cutting, I’ll spread dirt, pine needles, leaves over the ground-level stump, expert testimony to years of experience in knavery.

I pull out my saw, then lie on my back quietly, listening, looking up into the gloomy night. There’s nothing to be heard but those hawks, owls and the wind. I start sawing. It’s soft pine and not more than four inches in diameter; I saw through in less than a minute. Nothing like when we took down the last one, a veritable ship’s mast. That time, Mike and I took turns cutting and leaning back on the tree to keep our saw from binding. We were definitely pushing our luck. When we got home, Mike, vehemently, almost in tears, swore he’d never go treenapping at Christmas again.